Does it matter that charters spend more on administration, less on instruction? (Julie Mack blog)

KALAMAZOO, MI -- In 2005, then-Rep. Jack Hoogendyk, R-Portage and one of the most conservative lawmakers in the Legislature, introduced a bill to mandate that at least 65 percent of schools' operating dollars were spent on instruction.

The average was -- and still is -- closer to 61 percent.

"Most Michigan families and most people who run a business would say we should be able to put more than 61 percent in the classroom to support the teachers, " Hoogendyk said at the time.

The bill didn't go anywhere, partially because public school officials put up a fuss.

But another factor is that Republicans realized two downsides of the bill in terms of GOP agenda, says David Arsen, a Michigan State University education professor who has studied school spending patterns.

One is that it would give Michigan Education Association more leverage to raise teacher salaries and benefits, which is the bulk of instructional spending.

The other point is that, while Hoogendyk's bill exempted charters, "it didn't make charters look very good" to put the focus on those spending breakdowns, Arsen said.

Arsen recently co-authored a study that indicates Michigan charter schools spend, on average, about 47 percent of their budget on instruction compared to an average of 60.5 percent for traditional public school districts.

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Meanwhile, charter schools spend almost 23 percent of their operating revenues on administration compared to less than 10 less for traditional public schools, according to Arsen's study.

That undermines a longtime argument among some critics of traditional public schools that those systems have administrative bloat, and that charters would be better positioned to direct more dollars to the classroom.

But Arsen's study, as well as Hoogendyk's bill, also raise the question: Does it matter?

There is not a definitive answer for that.

In fact, Arsen says a case can be made for investing in educational leadership. Indeed, there's plenty of research that indicates a school principal can be a major factor in determining whether a school is successful or not.

But research also says that of the factors controlled by schools, the most important is teacher quality. And the fact is, a big reason that charters spend less on instruction is their tendency to hire less-experienced, less-expensive teachers.

Some charters compensate for that by having more structure and more scripted lesson plans for their faculty. But the fact that charters have less experienced teachers and more turnover may help explain why charters, on the whole, do not outperform traditional public schools in academics -- despite advantages such as lack of union rules and parents who have proven a commitment to education by shopping for school options.

Arsen's study does not tackle the issue of how spending patterns impact academic achievement. But it does conclude with the point that some advocates of the charter-school movement wanted to see schools operate more like a business -- and in spending more on administration, charters schools seems to be doing exactly that, for better or worse.

Concludes the study:

Charter schools clearly operate in more competitive environments and within organizational structures that give greater sway to governance arrangements traditionally found in the private sector. In Michigan, charter schools have responded to these changes by devoting significantly more resources to administrative activities and less to instruction than traditional public schools. While there is little question that charter schools are offering a variety of promising practices that TPSs could usefully emulate, we nevertheless find patterns of charter school resource use that are at odds with prevailing conceptions of spending changes that are needed for school improvement. Rather charter schools have advanced a top-heavy reallocation of resources that mirrors the distributional shifts unfolding so dramatically over recent decades in the U.S. private sector.